Category Archives: Critique

Let’s hear from all the sides in the Vietnam war, counsels Ken Burns, creator of the Public Broadcasting Service documentary, “Vietnam“: the North Vietnamese civilian; the Vietcong guerilla fighter, our erstwhile allies in the South. Let’s hear them all.

On the other hand, when it comes to the history of the South and the War of Northern Aggression, it’s, “Take those monuments DOWN!” More precisely, “Check the date on which the monument went up,” instructs the Burns. “If it’s the 1880s and 1890s take it down! They’re all, then, about the reimposition of white supremacy.”

This verbally incontinent filmmaker says the confederacy was traitorous. “OUR government” never recognized it. A rebellion was being suppressed by “us.”

The Indian tribesman’s claim to his ancient stomping grounds can’t be reduced to a title search at the deeds office. That’s the stuff of the positive law. And this was the point I took away from a conversation, circa 2000, with Mr. Property Rights himself, Hans-Hermann Hoppe.

Dr. Hoppe argued unassailably—does he argue any other way?—that if Amerindians had repeatedly traversed, for their livelihood, the same hunting, fishing and foraging grounds, they would have, in effect, homesteaded these, making them their own. Another apodictic profundity deduced from that conversation: The strict Lockean stipulation, whereby to make property one’s own, one must transform it to Western standards, is not convincing.

In an article marking Columbus Day—the day Conservatism Inc. beats up on what remains of America’s First People—Ryan McMaken debunked Ayn Rand’s specious claim that aboriginal Americans “did not have the concept of property or property rights.” This was Rand’s ruse for justifying Europeans’ disregard for the homesteading rights of the First Nations. “[T]he Indian tribes had no right to the land they lived on because” they were primitive and nomadic.

Hoppean Homesteading

Cultural supremacy is no argument for the dispossession of a Lesser Other. To libertarians, Lockean—or, rather Hoppean—homesteading is sacrosanct. He who believes he has a right to another man’s property ought to produce proof that he is its rightful owner. “As the old legal adage goes, ‘Possession is nine-tenths of the law,’ as it is the best evidence of legitimate title. The burden of proof rests squarely with the person attempting to relieve another of present property titles.” (Into The Cannibal’s Pot: Lessons for America from Post-Apartheid South Africa, p. 276.)

However, even if we allow that “the tribes and individual Indians had no concept of property,” which McMaken nicely refutes—it doesn’t follow that dispossessing them of their land would have been justified. From the fact that a man or a community of men lacks the intellectual wherewithal or cultural and philosophical framework to conceive of these rights—it doesn’t follow that he has no such rights, or that he has forfeited them. Not if one adheres to the ancient doctrine of natural rights. If American Indians had no attachment to the land, they would not have died defending their territories.

Neither does the fact the First Nations formed communal living arrangements invalidate land ownership claims, as McMaken elucidates. Think of the Kibbutz. Kibbutzim in Israel instantiate the principles of voluntary socialism. As such, they are perfectly fine living arrangements, where leadership is empowered as custodian of the resource and from which members can freely secede. You can’t rob the commune of its assets just because members elect to live communally. …

Those who are unfamiliar with the methods of praxeology and deductive reasoning will twist into pretzels to find fault with this essay. Maybe read the ancients (not the neocons) on natural rights.critiquing neocons on natural rights is a straw man.

Commentator Jack Kerwick has no mercy for Ms. Ann Coulter (although he’s very nice about Mercer), in his American Greatness article. Myself, I find it enormously useful that Ann is doing the work this immigrant does not want to do.

I kept up 8 years of attacks on Genghis Bush. I’m tired. Ms. Coulter has the broad professional shoulders to tackle Trump. Let Ann keep Trump on his toes (although I doubt it’s possible; the man is a dud). Ann used to be a GOPer, now she’s The People’s warrior. A patriot disappointed will rage.

Bless the brothers; at least they protest police brutality. Compared to perpetually angry blacks, whites are cowards. No whites got riled up to riot following the cold-blooded murder by Somali cop of a white yogi lady. Australian Justine Damond was shot in the course of being a good Samaritan and reporting a crime. I’m sure protesting Minneapolis residents, mostly black, are not raging specifically because of Ms. Damon’s death, but it’s good enough that, for once, their anger converges with that of the ever-silent majority.

Chaos erupted at a Minneapolis press conference Friday night as the city’s mayor nominated a new police chief amid city-wide anger in the wake of the officer-involved shooting of an Australian bride-to-be.

Minneapolis residents and demonstrators attended the news conference, and one man began shouting down Mayor Betsy Hodges, yelling, “we do not want you as mayor” and that she is “ineffective” to applause from those gathered. As Hodges left the room, the demonstrators chanted “Bye Bye Betsy!” Signs with the phrases “Messy Betsy” and “You are next” were seen in the crown, The Associated Press reports.

About an hour later, Hodges returned to speak to the gathered press and take questions. The mayor had asked for Minneapolis Police Chief Janeé Harteau resignation after she “lost confidence in the chief’s ability to lead.” She announced that she has nominated Assistant Chief Medaria “Rondo” Arradondo to lead the department.

Earlier Friday night, Harteau had announced that she is resigning in the wake of the deadly shooting last weekend. …